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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Streaming Cafe the Year in Review

What a year it’s been for Streaming Café! Hopefully you’ve been along for the ride the whole way – but if you’ve joined us in the last little bit, thanks for hopping on board!

Julie Doiron, Catherine MacLellan, Corb Lund; 2010 has been a banner year for Streaming Café in regard to artists. Talent from across the country has made its way to our comfy little venue, and we’ve loved every minute of the music! It’s been an honour to work with some of the best in the indie world over the past 12 months; it’s great to hear an artist on CBC one day, and then hear them live, in person, the next! One of our highlights this year was being a host venue for Breakout West, the music festival surrounding the Western Canadian Music Awards. Adaline, Del Barber, Violent Kin, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, Dojo Workhorse, Jen Lane, Ben Sigston, even the jazz drummer Sandro Dominelli and his trio played SC during Breakout West, and they kept us hopping!

We’ve seen changes or advances this year in both our format and our delivery systems. Since our inception we’ve always wanted to connect audience members to the artist as much as possible, and we used to think that meant having a host for the show who could ask questions of the artist as they came in online or in-house. For the last several weeks, however, we’ve rigged up a new system for the artist to be able to see directly the questions that come in online (and in-house, too), even without a host. It’s been great! Whether you’re watching the show from the Café, or from the website, you can add your own questions to the mix and have the artist answer you directly! We’re really pumped about how well this has been going.

Streaming Café has always tried to give online viewers the best experience possible, and we’ve had three major advances this year that have served to enhance that focus. First of all, half-way through the year our Fibre Optic system was finally activated, and so now our shows go out over the fastest connection possible to mankind (cool, eh?). And secondly, on the receiving end, we’ve started streaming the show to the iPhone and iPad as well – go ahead, check us out on your trendy Apple device! And thirdly, for those of us who prefer our online experience to be on a larger screen, we here at SC have been streaming our show in what’s called a “Multi-Bit-Rate”, or MBR, meaning the show goes out in different streams; whatever speed your connection is, the live show or the archived video (from our Past Shows section) will play at the best quality for your internet service level. And if you want the video feed to stay at one particular quality level, you can even right-click on the video screen and select your preference (also cool, eh?).

Thanks for being along for the ride. In fact, to thank you for your active participation and support, we’ve rigged up a little contest to celebrate. It’s all about the music; and you can learn more about that contest elsewhere in this newsletter.